


Reaching Out

by Silential



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Mutual Masturbation, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Shared Dreams, The Force Awakens Kink Meme, force dreams beyond just the island, shared loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 03:25:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5692765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silential/pseuds/Silential
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey doesn't only dream of the ocean and island. She dreams of loneliness, pain, and the failure of lifetimes. But in this, there is a pleasure that might not be her own, and the thought that maybe, she is reaching back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reaching Out

It’s a surprise every night that any inkling of sleep can be coaxed from the hard pallet she calls a bed. Threadbare blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders, knees drawn up to her chest, Rey relies on the crippling exhaustion of a day’s work to bludgeon her conscious mind into what might be called slumber. It works, and for that small thing she is grateful. 

That, and the island. 

It’s the point right between wakefulness and sleep that the images start, creeping slowly into her mind as she might into an exhaust port, sunken half in the sand. Rey doesn’t know if she’s ever seen an ocean not made of sand but there it is all the same, waves lapping at a white shore while green-streaked cliffs tower above. She can hear it, and smell it, the salt borne up by the spray a strange taste on her tongue, a sensation on her skin. 

There’s a saying on Jakku, one she’s repeated to herself often: don’t curse the Gods – they’ll only retaliate. It’s one she should have reminded herself of when it came to the dreams, because maybe then she would have been left with the ocean. The ocean is nice, she thinks – calming. Peaceful. If that’s all there was, she might consider it a welcome little blessing at the end of the day. 

Only, that’s not where the images ended. At least not any more. Each night is different now. 

Some nights, as she slips further into the miasma that is her dreaming thoughts, the ocean shifts to a desert, small domes of clay rising like exposed boulders as two suns sink slowly behind the horizon. It’s quiet, so goddamn still, but it’s not her desert – it feels wrong, it tastes wrong. The dust from a passed sandstorm chokes her throat, and if she drew in enough air, she could almost taste the char of burning metal, of burning flesh. 

She awakens from those dreams with salt on her cheeks and ice in her veins. 

Other nights the shrill shriek of blaster fire zings by her ear, enough to muffle sound for a few moments after it passes, only to collide with a control panel in a furious shower of sparks. The scene changes, murky water filling her hastily strapped boots with the squelch of mud underfoot. The air reeks of sulfur and of decay, and if she could see anything in the fog, maybe then she could stop the fearful staccato of her heart. 

It pumps against the wall of her chest long after Rey awakens from those dreams, gasping and reaching for the tendrils of vines she was sure had fallen around her. 

The worst, however, are the dreams of the room. 

Outside, she hears the dull roar of the ocean, can still smell the salt. But inside, it’s tiny and barren, no attempt made to add a splash of color, a splash of life, as she has so desperately tried to impart to the AT-AT she calls home. There is the knowledge that there should be no color, no life, as that would imply the occupant of the room deserved to feel at home, to feel at ease – to feel human. 

No, there is nothing but crushing, crippling loneliness. Not like hers, never like hers. It is easy to be lonely when one has never been wanted. This is different; this is the loneliness of one that has known warmth, known joy, and has left it far behind. She aches for that warmth now, the warmth that she needn’t ever have felt for herself to know how much its loss ricochets around her chest like a blaster gone wrong. Days and months pass, and she dreams of the room more often, more strongly. She crawls into the skin of its occupant and drowns in the failure of lifetimes. Rey awakens each morning haunted, hunted. 

Well, most mornings. 

Some mornings watch as her hand steals quietly below the waistband of her trousers, homing in on the heat the dreams had awoken there. Half-awake the heel of her hand traces the path of another’s, the echo of something quite different sliding slickly against her palm. It’s not her own breath gasping in her ear, she thinks, the harsh brush of something she can’t quite place along her cheek. The soft, hot spill against her almost-palm causes her hips to lift, a prickling gooseflesh to rise on her bare arms and legs. Fragments, the lot of them, and when the last vestiges of sleep dissipate from her eyes and a sole fingertip comes to _rub rub rub _Rey wonders if she had imagined the flash of herself in her mind’s eye.__

Probably, she figures, mind settling on the freighter pilot she’s seen at the outpost a handful of times before. Quiet, with blue eyes and a beard peppered by more years than she cares to count – yes, that will do nicely. 

The dreams continue as they always do, night after night reaching into her subconscious and tangling the thoughts they found there. And each time, Rey wonders if she’s unknowingly reaching back.


End file.
